Heal with Grace

Grace Secker
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Heal With Grace is a podcast that invites listeners into the world of holistic healing. Hosted by Grace Secker, a trained holistic psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and nervous system coach, each episode delves into the interconnected realms of mental, physical, and spiritual health. The podcast offers a unique blend of personal stories, professional insights, and practical tools for healing.

  1. 2 days ago

    141. How to Prevent a Nervous System Flare While Traveling

    I just got back from three weeks in Namibia, and regulating my nervous system while traveling got tested every single day of that trip. I'm not going to pretend it was smooth. We changed hotels more nights than not, lost service we'd already paid for, and a few days in, I felt the same warning signs that used to send me into a flare that lasted weeks. This time it lasted three days. The difference wasn't that nothing went wrong. Things went wrong constantly. The difference was what I did next. I'd already padded my nervous system before I left, so when a flare showed up in the middle of nowhere with no doctor for hours, I had support lined up instead of panic. I got what I needed physically, then I went hard on the mind-body tools I actually teach: breath, visualization, journaling on what the flare might be asking for. It didn't erase the fear in the moment, but it kept the fear from running the show. I'm also getting honest about the cold I came home with, and why I'm done calling every post-travel symptom "just jet lag" without asking what it's actually pointing to. In the past, coming home from a big trip meant a full week of feeling like I was falling apart. This time it didn't, and I want to walk you through why. If you've ever noticed your body has a pattern around travel, or around any kind of stress, this episode walks through how I'm learning to read that pattern instead of just riding it out. Healing was never about never getting activated again. It's about widening how much activation you can hold before it takes you down. That's the real lesson this trip handed me, and it's what I'm handing you today. Resources mentioned: Episode 137. What I'm Doing to Prep My Nervous System for Travel How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  2. 1 Sept

    140. 5 Things I See People Do Who Recover

    If you're trying to figure out how to recover from chronic pain and illness and you keep hitting the same wall, this is the episode I want you to save and come back to. Because here's what happens when you're stuck. Your frontal lobe (the logical, decision-making part of you) goes offline in a stress response. So you forget everything you've learned. I've been there. I was there a couple of years ago after my mold crash, years into being recovered, and I forgot half the skills I had. That's not failure. That's what a stressed nervous system does. So save this one. Come back to it when the flare hits and your brain goes one-track. I'm walking through the five things I consistently see in people who go from stuck to recovered, and they're the same things that got me there. It starts with how you describe yourself (there's a real difference between "I'm someone with chronic fatigue" and "I'm a healing body," and it's not positive thinking; it's what your subconscious is running on). Then we get into stopping the 3am searching and the WebMD spiral, which feels productive but keeps your nervous system in threat mode. We also talk about going into your emotions without being afraid of them, how to change your response when a flare shows up instead of freaking out and assuming you're back at square one, and the big one: living your life WHILE you still have symptoms. Because living first, carefully and gently, is what teaches the body it's safe. Waiting until you feel better keeps the alarm on. None of this is willpower. It's all retraining. And it's completely learnable. Resources mentioned: Free neuroplastic symptom screener (2-minute quiz) JournalSpeak by Nicole Sachs How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  3. 25 Aug

    139. What I Wish Every Therapist or Coach Knew About the Nervous System

    This one's for the therapists, coaches, and practitioners. (And honestly, if you're a listener who's ever sat across from a provider who didn't know how to help you stay. This episode is why I made it.) Here's the gap I want to name. Most of us were trained beautifully in one half of this work. We learned to hold space, build the therapeutic relationship, sit with hard feelings, work with trauma histories. What we were never taught is that the nervous system is actively generating physical symptoms in a huge portion of our caseloads. Some physicians in this space estimate close to 40% of people walking through a primary care door have symptoms driven this way. Those are the same people landing on our couches, in our rooms, on our Zoom calls. And a lot of us were never taught to even assess for it. I know I wasn't. So in this episode I'm walking through the difference between regulating a nervous system and rewiring it, and why almost all of us were only trained for one. Regulation is state management. It's the longer exhale, the feet on the floor, the co-regulation. It's foundational and it matters enormously (a nervous system that never gets to feel safe cannot do deeper work). BUT if regulation is all we do, we're managing the danger alarm instead of updating it. I also get into how the brain learns a symptom in the first place, what neuroplastic symptoms actually are, why "your pain is real AND the signal is coming from the brain" is the most important thing you can say to a client, and what changes on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when you finally have a map for the client whose GI tests keep coming back normal. And I'll tell you what this did for me: it didn't just change my clients' outcomes, it changed how it feels to do the work. I stopped doubting whether I could help. Resources mentioned: Free neuroplastic symptom assessment tool Free practitioner masterclass, Tuesday, September 8 MindBody Integration Method practitioner training, launching this fall How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  4. 18 Aug

    138. Healing Chronic Pain That Hasn't Budged in Years with Dr. David Schechter

    If you've been living with chronic pain that won't go away -> the kind that hasn't budged in years, no matter how many doctors, scans, or treatments you've thrown at it -> this conversation is going to give you something most appointments never have: a reason it makes sense, and a real way forward. Dr. David Schechter has been treating chronic pain through a mind-body lens for decades. He trained under Dr. John Sarno himself -> the physician who started this entire field -> after walking into his office as a young medical student with knee pain that wouldn't quit. What Sarno told him that day changed the direction of his career. And what happened at that Monday night seminar might sound a lot like what you've been waiting to feel: a weight lifting. In this episode, David breaks down the difference between acute and chronic pain, and why anything past the 3-6 month mark means your nervous system is involved -> no matter what your scans show. We get into the concept every patient needs to know: the nocebo effect. Because the words a doctor says to you ("you have a horrible spine," "you'll need surgery in five years") don't just describe your body. They can shape your pain. Language, as David puts it, is the software of the brain. We also talk about what it takes to heal symptoms that have been around for years, not months -> the persistence, the doubts worth exploring, and why focusing on capacity instead of pain changes the trajectory. And he shares two stories I can't stop thinking about: patients who saw more than twenty physicians, and finally found their way to neuroplastic healing because AI pointed them somewhere no doctor had. If your pain has been dismissed, mislabeled, or just plain stuck -> this one's for you. Find Dr. David Schechter: Website Books: The MindBody Workbook Think Away Your Pain ATNS Practitioner Directory How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  5. 11 Aug

    137. What I’m Doing to Prep My Nervous System for Travel

    You know that feeling when a trip is coming up and your brain starts running a whole side operation at 3am? That's what this episode is about: how to calm your nervous system before a trip, instead of white-knuckling your way through the two weeks beforehand. Grace is leaving for a three week trip and instead of packing her schedule and trying to get everything done before she goes, she's doing the opposite. She calls it her grounding period. No hard workouts. No last-minute house projects. No pretending the anxiety isn't there. Just noticing it, writing it down, and letting it be there without making it mean something's wrong. She also tells the story of the time she went straight from an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica to a flight to Europe, no integration time, no rest, and how that taught her more about nervous system regulation than almost anything else has. Plus the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual prep she does now, what she actually does when a flare hits mid-trip, and the realization she just had about jet lag that's going to blow your mind a little. Resources mentioned: John Sarno / mind-body pain literature How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  6. 4 Aug

    136. Your Chronic Pain Is 100% Real and Here's Why Your Nervous System Is Still Behind It

    If you've ever had someone tell you your pain is real and then in the same breath tell you there's nothing wrong; this episode is for you. Here's the thing the medical model never made room for: both can be true at the same time. Your chronic pain and illness are real. Completely, 100% real. And your nervous system is still driving it. That is not a contradiction. That is how pain actually works. Symptoms are not a damage meter. They’re a danger signal. Your brain's best guess about how much threat your body is under. Which means two people can have the identical MRI findings and one of them is in agony and one of them is fine. And a person with completely clean scans can be in the worst pain of their life. The finding does not predict the feeling. That's not a flaw in the system; that's the system doing exactly what it was built to do. Grace breaks this down in this episode with two groups: people whose testing comes back clean (negative testing is not the end of the road — for a lot of you, it's the beginning of the real answer), and people who do have real positive findings. Both have nervous system involvement. The nervous system is the volume dial on pain, and it decides how loud the signal gets turned up — regardless of what the scan shows. There's also a sharp test in here worth knowing: pain that moves around from your shoulders to your hip to your jaw is not structural. Tissue damage doesn't travel. A dysregulated nervous system does. And pain that eases on vacation — if a beach touches it, it's nervous system. Save this one for when you’re flaring and need to hear it again. Resources mentioned: - Dr. Schechter — mind-body physician [GEL: link to his previous HWG episode] - PRT practitioner listserv  - Practitioner masterclass  - Mind-Body Healing Method program for nervous system healing  How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  7. 28 Jul

    135. What to Do When Healing Feels Stuck with Karden Rabin

    If you've been doing the breathwork, the journaling, the somatic work and you're still stuck — this episode is the one that explains why. Karden Rabin didn't arrive at this work as a patient who got lucky. He arrived as the practitioner who thought he had the answer. Twelve years as a bodyworker — craniosacral, structural integration, myofascial release, the whole thing. Then a seven-month horror show of back pain landed him on John Sarno's book. And he couldn't unknow it. He's now the founder of Somia International and the HEAL Program and the author of The Secret Language of the Body. What he brings to this conversation is the frame most people in this space are missing. Every technique you've been using; breathwork, brain retraining, journaling, somatic exercises is doing the same thing. It's interrupting and updating a protective pattern your nervous system built when it believed you were in danger. Most of those patterns aren't dangerous anymore. They're just on loop. The game isn't collecting more tools. It's recognizing the pattern and updating it toward safety. He also reframes something a lot of people in this work need to hear: calm isn't the goal. Calm is a dependent state; it's what happens when two things are true. You feel safe from danger (yin). And you know you can handle danger if it shows up (yang). Most people who've done a ton of inner work have a lot of yin. They're missing the yang. Not more softness - the felt sense that if life gets hard, you've got yourself. We also go into the "I can't" — the deep freeze that lives underneath most type A behavior, right before the double espresso and the push-through. And why dissolving it is completely different from powering past it. Resources mentioned: - The Secret Language of the Body by Karden Rabin and Jennifer Mann - Somia International / HEAL Program - John Sarno — Healing Back Pain How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  8. 21 Jul

    134. Nervous System 101: How to Know If It's Behind Your Chronic Pain or Illness

    There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from understanding everything and still not changing. You've read the books. You've listened to the podcasts. You can explain neuroplastic symptoms. You might even be fully bought in. And you're still sitting in your body going — so why isn't this working? That's what this episode is about. Here's the thing most people in this space haven't heard yet: insight and regulation are two completely different skills. They happen in different parts of your brain. You can have a life-changing realization about why your body does what it does, and your nervous system can sit there completely unmoved by it. Because it doesn't speak the language of insight. It speaks the language of experience. If a symptom has been in your body for more than six months — the pain, the fatigue, the gut stuff, the dizziness — your nervous system is involved. That's true no matter what your labs say. No matter what specialists have or haven't found. No matter how many times someone has told you they're not sure what's wrong. Your nervous system and chronic pain or illness are connected in ways the old medical model just never had room for. Grace shares from her own journey in this one — including a stretch where she went deep into the physical route, got caught in protocol after protocol, and realized she wasn't working with what actually mattered: the emotional state, the belief patterns, the stuff her body had been holding. The shift that changed everything for her wasn't more understanding. It was structure. A repeatable, sequenced framework for actually practicing regulation — not just knowing about it. This episode is for you if you're somewhere between knowing and doing. If you've absorbed all the education and your body still hasn't caught up. If you're wondering whether the nervous system piece is really what's going on for you. The map doesn't move you. The road does. How to work with Grace: Apply to the Mind Body Integration Training Founding Practitioner CohortMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

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About

Heal With Grace is a podcast that invites listeners into the world of holistic healing. Hosted by Grace Secker, a trained holistic psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and nervous system coach, each episode delves into the interconnected realms of mental, physical, and spiritual health. The podcast offers a unique blend of personal stories, professional insights, and practical tools for healing.

Information

  • Creator
    Grace Secker
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    140
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Heal with Grace
  • Show Website
    Heal with Grace

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